In existing radar systems, the velocity of an object or a vehicle may be determined based on a Doppler frequency shift in a received signal. The received signal may be down-converted in frequency, digitized by an analog-to-digital converter, and stored in a data buffer for subsequent processing. A data processor within the radar system may use a mathematical transform, such as a Fast Fourier transform to identify the frequency components of the digital representation of the received signal stored in the data buffer. For practical applications of the radar system, the data processor and associated processing of the mathematical transform need to be done in real time or with sufficient promptness to be useful.
To some extent, the data buffer may be increased in size to increase the responsiveness of the processing of the mathematical transform. However, if the data buffer size is increased beyond a certain limit, the data processor may have insufficient throughput or capacity to process all of the data in the data buffer in real time. In addition, as the data buffer is increased in size, power consumption also tends to increase. Thus, there is a need for improving the processing of the mathematical transform and improving the responsiveness of the determining a velocity of an object or a vehicle.